


How to Save a Life

by Servena



Series: How to Save a Life [1]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: Angst, Animal Death, Exhaustion, Gen, Hopeful Ending, Insomnia, Mother-Son Relationship, Overworking, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Psychological Trauma, Suicide contemplation, Unhealthy Coping Mechanisms
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-01-13
Packaged: 2019-10-09 10:02:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17404838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Servena/pseuds/Servena
Summary: He wasn’t even aware how being a medic had seeped into every crack of his being until he returned home and was expected to just stop.





	How to Save a Life

When he gets up after hours of tossing and turning in his bed, the sun is barely peeking over the horizon. He washes himself in the sink with shaking hands, staring at his face in the dull mirror. It’s too pale with dark shadows underneath his eyes, and he’s trying to breathe despite the tension that clenches up his chest.

He can’t seem to shake this feeling of nervous anticipation, the knowledge that something bad is about to happen and that he has to be ready to fix it. It feels like sitting in his foxhole in Bastogne, straining his ears for the call of “Medic” over the sound of machine gun fire and the whistling of the shells. Waiting has always been the worst, but it’s worse still if you know you’re waiting in vain.

He walks down the steps quietly, careful to not wake up anybody else. He halts in the door to the kitchen, considering doing the dishes his Ma didn’t get to the evening before (and usually his Ma does the dishes right after dinner every single day since he has been a kid, but she has finally stopped resisting his attempts of drowning himself in work), but he’s worried of making too much noise or maybe breaking something if he can’t get his hands to be more steady.

So instead he pulls on his boots and steps outside the back door. The air is cold and the rising sun is casting long shadows over the grass. He circles the house slowly, noticing the faded paint and the rust on the drip rail. In the end he starts to fix the fence around the chicken house. The hole in it isn’t big enough for a chicken to escape, but it’s something to mend, even if it is not as satisfying as tending to the flesh and blood of living beings.

He wasn’t even aware how being a medic had seeped into every crack of his being until he returned home and was expected to just stop. He felt adrift without a purpose, like a shepherd dog without a flock to watch over. Back then when his anxiety threated to get the better off him, he could always busy himself by looking out for the others, checking feet for signs of trench foot, digging up a blanket or some mittens, talking to someone who seemed a bit on edge. He always had a feeling that at least some of them knew that this was as much for his benefit as their own, but they never minded – no soldier at the front line would reject a bit of care and attention.

Out here he had nothing to do, especially since his mother seemed determined to make his stay as comfortable as possible, and after a few days he felt like he was going insane. He couldn’t sleep, couldn’t even calm down enough to relax for a while.

The day he shot the horse behind the shed was the one that almost broke him. He knew that it was the right choice, that he would prevent a slow and agonizing death of a sickness that he couldn’t even hope to cure, but afterwards he sank down with his back against the wall of the shed and struggled to breathe through his tears, his father’s gun impossibly heavy in his hands.

It wasn’t like he had never done this before. It wasn’t like he ever fired a gun in that war of his either. But it was still too much to hear the sound of the massive body hitting the ground and to see the vacant look in its eyes. His whole body was trembling as he sat like this, and he knew that he would need to phone the butcher but he just couldn’t move. And then he stared at the weight in his lap and a solution offered itself to him.

It wasn’t like he had never considered this before.

In the end it was the needs of other people that saved him (and wasn’t that fitting). What kind of son would he be to return from war with barely a scratch and then blow his brain out in his parents’ backyard? If he had wanted to do this, he should have done so earlier, while there was still the possibility that he wouldn’t come back. But he never could have abandoned the men that relied on him either, and maybe it was meant to be this way.

He returned the gun to the shed and vowed to never touch it again.

Afterwards his mother saw the look in his eyes, and for the first time she didn’t say anything when he took the dirty dishes out of her hand. So now he works from sun up until sun down, never stopping to move unless his mother forces him to sit down to eat something, desperate to ease the nervous energy in his body. It’s barely enough to take the edge off so he can sleep when he falls into bed at night.

He replaces broken shingles on the roof, greases all the doors in the house, fixes up the tap that has been dripping for as long as he can remember. His mother has less work to do than ever since he takes every chance to hang up the laundry or chop vegetables for dinner. She has stopped protesting, but sometimes he catches her looking at him and he feels guilty for worrying her like this.

He feels as exhausted as he did in Bastogne, though less cold, but at least no one is trying to blow him up. He’s still jumpy, flinching when a door slams shut because of the draft or when a car backfires on the street. He fears the day he will run out of work. Of course he could get a job instead, should probably, but even the thought of all those people around him makes him tremble.

So he’s here instead, kneeling in the moist grass and fixing a chicken fence. He’s cut himself on the wire and his hand is bleeding, but he can barely feel it. The morning air is cool around him and he can hear the birds singing in a nearby tree. It’s the most peaceful he has felt in ages.

He doesn’t hear his mother approaching, so focused is he on the work in front of him, so when she speaks he jumps almost a foot into the air. “You’re up early.”

“Jesus Christ”, he pants as he turns around, willing his rapidly beating heart to slow down again.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you”, she says, and he can see the worry on her face. Then she nods at the fence. “Your father has been meaning to do that.”

“Yeah, so he’s been saying for the last five years”, he says dryly and that at least gets a smile out of her. “I’m almost done anyway.”

She nods. “You should come in for breakfast.”

“I will.” He looks at the basket she’s carrying. “I can hang up the laundry.”

She hesitates, but then she hands it to him. “Alright. But don’t be late.”

He watches her as she walks back towards the house. He feels guilty for worrying her, but he also doesn’t know how to stop.

So it’s like this for a while. And then Babe Heffron comes to visit and everything changes.


End file.
